A Touch of the Thaumaturgics

I have just read, in a reference book of mine, of Saint Godric’s “effectiveness as a financial consultant or thaumaturge”.

This wasn’t a nineteenth century encyclopedia, but was published in 1996, intended for a readership that includes (so the dust jacket blurb implies) ordinary history lovers, with a text that is praised as ‘eminently readable’.

Hands up all those that know a thaumaturge when they see one. Some kind of banker, we might guess from the context.

If so, then perhaps the kind of banker we could do with today, for the word is merely a Greek version of the English ‘wonder-worker’ - or (in Latinate terminology) ‘one who performs miracles’.

Greek thauma means a ‘wonder’ or ‘astonishment’, derived from the Gr verb thaomai = to gaze at, to be amazed, to admire. The ‘-urge’ part of the word ‘thaumaturge’ comes from a Gr root ‘erg-’ meaning ‘work’ (as seen as the middle element in our word energy, or the first in our term ‘ergonomics’).

Personally, I think the term ‘miracle-worker’ would have been the best term to describe this talent of St Godric’s. He was a Norfolk man, born at the time of the Norman Conquest, who in a life of over a hundred years travelled much both as a merchant and a pilgrim, and at last retired as a hermit to a wild place a few miles up the river Wear from Durham, at a spot known both in his day and ours as ‘Finchale’ (pronounced ‘Finkle’), where the evocative ruins of a 13th century priory mark his burial place and the vicinity of his hermitage.

Godric certainly ‘had a way’ with animals. One day he found a stag tearing at the leaves of one of his trees. He waved the crook of a finger at it, and the beast fell apologetically to its knees: he pardoned it, and led it away. Marauding bears would, at a word from Godric, run off - though roaring a bit first. If a deer was being chased by the bishop of Durham’s huntsmen, it would make a detour until it reached the shelter of the saint’s hut. On one occasion when something like this happened, the huntsmen asked the saint “Where has it gone ?” He replied “God knows where”. The huntsmen departed and the deer survived.

A Touch of the Thaumaturgics